Known Issues

Known Issues affecting the Cycle 2 release of the ALMA Observing Tool

The following table lists those issues which are known to affect the Cycle-2 version of the Observing Tool. This will be updated to denote whether an issue has been fixed and whether this fix has made it into an updated release.

Updates

Update 1: An update of the OT is planned for Monday 18 November.

Issue

Description

Resolved?

Deployed?

C1_001

Although it is indicated that copy and paste operations in a Mac use the "command" key, often the "control" key is required, particularly for text copy/paste.

C1_017

The tarball version of the OT with its own Java is 32-bit only. A 64-bit version should be provided.

C1_023

Calibration searches may crash due to problems with the database. Reducing the number of results may avoid the problem.

C1_032

Leaving the OT open for days at a time can cause an error upon saving. Saving to another file, closing the OT and re-opening produces a "ZLIB input stream" error i.e. the project is unreadable. This issue is yet to be satisfactorily characterised.

C1_037

The OT will crash if, within the same session, the display is changed between a laptop's own screen and an external screen (and vice versa). This has only been reported on a Mac running Java 7.

ASC can fail (give an integration time of infinity) if a bandwidth value >16 is entered, even though the unit has been set to something legal i.e. 17 kHz. The solution is to hit return on the value once more.

C2_004

Upon opening the Spectral Setup node, the source highlighted in the Target table can sometimes not correspond to the velocities displayed for each spectral window. The solution is to click on the desired source once more.

C2_005

Science Goal summary table only shows continuum fluxes and due to always being displayed in Jy, even these may appear to be zero.

Yes

Update 1

C2_006

Entering an illegal angular resolution can prompt the misleading validation error "the desired sensitivity is less than or equal to zero". The solution is to correct the angular resolution.

C2_007

The proposal summary form is not including the 3 hours of minimum time for polarization projects.

Yes

Update 1

C2_008

The 3-hour minimum time for polarization projects is not being applied to both 12-m configurations.

Yes

Update 1

C2_009

Placing spectral windows that are exactly as far apart as they can possibly be can cause an error, the text of which is also misleading.

C2_010

Time estimates for projects involving multiple field sources per SG are being under-estimated.

Yes

Update 1

C2_011

The OT does not warn against only entering a line flux or width in the expected properties section - both should be given.

Yes

Update 1

C2_012

The OT's estimation of number of resolution elements is different on the TA Sheet and in the TJ node.

C2_013

Any change to the polarization choice (Single, Dual, Full) resets the ACA choice. This should not happen for changes between Single and Dual.

C2_014

Copying and pasting elements from one Science Goal to another using the keyboard shortcuts or the menu items will cause the OT to become unusable. Dropping and dragging works fine though. Clicking elsewhere in the projet i.e. on anothe Science Goal, may fix the problem.

C2_015

The on- and off-line searches of the spectral line catalogue are not consistent in that the on-line version includes brackets around isotopic labels e.g. (13)CN, whilst the off-line list does not.

C2_016

The OT's data rate justification warning is half that described in the Proposer's Guide and should be using 12 MB/s as the warning threshold.

Yes

Update 1

C2_017

The OT always schedules ATM/Tsys cals on both phase and target scans even though it should be either one or the other.

C2_018

The number of calibrator scans required for spectral scans is not being calculated correctly.

Yes

Update 1

C2_019

Changing the spectral scan frequencies does not update the velocity equivalents. Simple workarounds include clicking elsewhere in the OT or re-setting the spectral averaging factor.

C2_020

The time estimate for a rectangular field mosaic is slightly different depending on whether a source name is entered or not. A name should of course always be entered.

C2_021

The redshift of the Cosmic Eyelash templates is not filled in. It should be set to 2.326.

C2_022

The OT silently turns the ACA off if factors that affect the ACA choice are edited.

Yes

Update 1

C2_023

Clicking on representative frequency in spectral visual editor causes sidebands to vanish and changes the representative frequency. The solution is to reset the representative frequency, perhaps be re-clicking on the representative window radio button.

C2_024

The first time a spectral scan time estimate is requested, the calibrator times will be set to zero. Immediately re-clicking on time estimate will show the correct calibration time. This does not affect the time estimate for a submitted project, even if a time estimate is never requested by the user.

C2_025

The export of source properties function does not retain the velocity Doppler type and thus re-importing the source information can lead to incorrect velocities as the optical definition is assumed.

C2_026

For Spectral Line Spectral Setups where the bandwidth for sensitivity is not set to a resolution element across a spectral line (aggregate bandwidth for example) the SNR calculation on the Technical Justification node will be incorrect. Technical Assessors will be told to disregard this value.

C2_027

It is not possible to turn off the ACA if the OT thinks that you need it.

C2_028

Copying Control and Performance parameters from one Science Goal to another can cause the array configuration information to become inconsistent with the representative frequency. This can be fixed by validating the proposal.